Shuttle has unveiled what it claims are the world's first small form-factor computers equipped with quad-core processors. Aimed at the pro market, the two machines are fitted with Intel Xeon chips rather than the more commonplace Core 2 Quad.

The XPC P2 3700W line-up includes a pair of quad-core models, both based on the 2.13GHz X3210 CPU, and equipped with up to 8GB of 667MHz ECC DDR 2 memory and up to 2.2TB of hard disk storage. The two machines come with Gigabit Ethernet and a choice of AMD ATI FireGL or Nvidia Quadro workstation-class graphics cards.

The two SFF workstations - the P2 3700W and the n-P2 3700W - are different only in the the fact that one ships with an operating system - Vista Business, in 32- or 64-bit versions - and the other doesn't.

Both are available immediately, Shuttle said, at prices starting at $1,649 (£848/€1,266). At this stage the machines are aimed exclusively at the US market.